One of the sessions I attended at Interactions 2016 was on the topic of PureCloud and Co-Browsing. In this blog, I’d like to share some the interesting points that came out of that session.

First of all, what is co-browsing? Co-browsing is short for Collaborative Browsing- as you might guess, it facilitates sharing a web browsing experience amongst one or more participants at the same time. Picture one of your agents guiding a customer through a number of steps on your own website. How could your customers take advantage of this feature on your own website? The use cases are compelling and vast.

Per Wikipedia, early co-browsing was achieved by local execution of software that had to be installed on the computer of each participant. More advanced tools didn’t have to be installed, but still required local execution of software or at least web-browser plug-ins, extensions, or applets. Most tools were limited to a single user that was able to navigate, while the others could only watch.

PureCloud co-browse only requires a modern browser, so no plug-ins, extensions, applets or downloads are required. It is provided as a JavaScript API that you add to your web page and your website administrators can customize the buttons used to initiate a co-browse session. PureCloud Webchat can be used to initiate co-browse sessions as well. In this way, co-browse is seamlessly integrated with PureCloud- access to this feature is controlled in employee roles and permissions settings.

Content that can be shared with PureCloud co-browse include web page content (except portions that have been masked), mouse position changes, scroll changes and focus changes. Here are a number of core features of PureCloud co-browse (and there are many more planned):

Unlimited participants

Co-browse session can span multiple pages

Page mirroring

Internationalized

Remote configuration

From a security and privacy standpoint, PureCloud co-browse allows sensitive fields to be masked or hidden- this way sensitive data can never be sent to unintended participants. Other features include secure communication via SSL (Secure Socket Layer), access controls and on-disk encryption. From a browser standpoint, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer 11+ will be supported.

PureCloud co-browse will be available soon as part of the PureCloud Engage 3 license (along with co-browse for CIC as an add-on), so stay tuned to the CPI blog to learn more!